Social Identity theory

When writing about social identity theory, the following concepts should be explained:

Social categorization: The process by which people categorize themselves and others into groups. This simplifies and helps us make sense of our social world.

Social identification: The process of conforming to the behaviors and values of your in-group.  In this process, your self-esteem is linked to your in-group.

Social comparison: If our self-esteem is to be maintained our group needs to compare favorably with other groups. We look to other groups to justify our membership in our own group.

In-group bias: the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others who belong to the same group that they do. This can happen even when people are randomly assigned to groups.

Out-group homogeneity bias: The tendency to assume that the members of other groups are very similar to each other, particularly in contrast to the assumed diversity of the membership of one’s own group.

Salience: This is when we are very much aware of one of our social identities.  It is argued that we make a social identity salient, it will play a key role in behaviour.

Abrams et al

Aim: Abrams

conducted a study to determine if in-group identity would affect one's willingness to conform. It also looks at the role of SIT on the level of conformity.

Procedure: The students were given a stimulus line to compare with three other lines of different lengths, one of which is the same length as the stimulus line. The student's task is to identify which of the three lines is the same length as the stimulus line. A ' naive' student will be introduced to an in-group to be psychology students or an out-group to be history students. The students will be seated in a row to give their judgement on the lines, everytime the 'naive' student will be placed at the end of the row so that they'll be the last to give their answer.

Findings: Seventy-seven per cent of all participants conformed to the erroneous confederate judgments on at least one trial. The actual proportion of conforming responses was 138 out of a possible 432 (i.e. 32 per cent). This is very similar to the results of the original Asch experiments.

Strengths:

  1. Experiment can be easily replicated
  2. It showed the effect of a group on conformity
  3. Experiment was repeated to ensure reliability

Limitations:

  1. the experiment used an artificial task to measure conformity which cannot be generalized to other real life situation
  2. Set in an unnatural environment which made the study lack ecological validity

Sherif et al

Aim: Investigate whether conflict between groups could diminish them working together on a superordinate goal (achieved by the co-operation of two or more people)

Procedure:

  • Boys went to a summer camp (unaware they were observed)
  • Randomly allocated into two groups
  • Groups kept separate and activities within groups aimed to construct a group bond (e.g. naming their group and stencilling their team name on shirts)
  • Conflict introduced through games and one group benefiting at the expense of the other

Findings:

  • Strong solidarity within groups after games and name-calling towards the opposite group
  • When asked to list features of the groups, the boys gave favourable terms towards their in-group and unfavourable terms to the out-group
  • Researchers introduced tasks that involved groups working together that diminished the conflict between groups

Strengths: High degree of ecological validity

Limitations:

  • Demand characteristics towards the introduction of the superordinate goal
  • Participants not protected from physical or psychological harm
  • Deception
  • Sampling bias so hard to generalise
  • Conflicts introduced do not necessarily reflect real life conflicts

When evaluating Social Identity Theory, you should consider some of the following points:

  • The theory can be applied to explain a lot of different behaviours. The theory has high heuristic validity.
  • The theory is difficult to test under naturalistic conditions. Non-laboratory examples are often anecdotal.
  • There are several constructs that are difficult to measure - for example, the salience of one's social identity, the boundaries of identities, or one's level of self-esteem related to social identity.
  • The theory does not predict well which identity will determine our behaviour.
  • The theory is more explanatory than predictive. In the case of sexuality, the theory may explain why a particular child may identify as lesbian, but it does not account for all the others that do not.
  • It is difficult to distinguish between the role of cultural dimensions and social identity.